home Worship Blog

Worship Planner for A Season to GROW
Week 4: Obedient Living

Created by Liz Mosbo VerHage. Liz is the ministry development pastoral consultant for First Covenant Church, Seattle, WA. She lives in Chicago and is a PhD student at Garrett-Northwestern. Liz blogs at www.livingtheology.net.
 

Suggested Hymns and Songs

See the Worship Resource Directory for links and ordering information.

1. Take My Life and Let it Be. #375 Covenant Hymnal (classic devotional)
2. Take my Life. By Chris Tomlin et al, worshiptogether.com music (popular worship song)
3. Christ You Call Us All to Service. #614 Covenant Hymnal (classic)
4. I'm gonna Live So God Can Use Me. #628 Covenant Hymnal (Spiritual)
5. God of All Light. By Matt Nightingale. This is a song of repentence and cry for restoration. It would work well as special music that follows a congregational prayer of confession or a personal faith story about human weakness and strength in Christ.
   
   

Suggested Prayers and Readings

1. Thanksgiving. #900 Covenant Hymnal.
2. Confession. #906 Covenant Hymnal
3. Journey to Do Justice. Responsive Reading by Liz Mosbo VerHage
4. Benediction Prayer. By Liz Mosbo VerHage
   
   

Sermon Illustrations 

• “We are living art, created to hang on, stand up, forbear, continue and encourage others.” Maya Angelou
  Our great privilege in the Christian walk is to tarry on this journey together. We get to represent Christ to each other. To encourage and carry one another when the road is too difficult. To let God speak to us through the beauty we see in each other.
  
  
  
• I John 2:3 – And we know that if we know God, we obey his commands. “Obeying” can feel like a negative or a positive response. Like children who need structure and consequences, Christians can respond to God’s commands in a negative way, or feel constrained or limited by God’s teachings. But obedience can also come out of a positive space, since it can be a mature response that we choose for ourselves because we want to do what God teaches. We see how things work together for good, and trust God to only teach us to do what benefits us and others. But obedience that comes out of our free choice and our desire to follow God must be born out of a relationship with God and a love for God’s ways. We can’t force obedience on others, or ourselves. We must start with God’s love for us and God’s character being what grounds our desire to obey and follow.  Then our whole heart will want to do what God does, to follow those ways.
  

• “Humans are both infinitely necessary and infinitely superfluous in God’s eyes…”  (an angel in C.S. Lewis’s novel, Perelandra). It is not up to us to be perfect or make God’s commands happen. God is able to do so much more then we could dream!  But our role is to listen, and be available, and to respond to God’s commands when He asks us to follow and love Him. God doesn’t rely on us, but invites us to follow and be part of God’s work of redeeming the whole world. It is our free choice, and what an amazing option it is, to take part in God’s work.